Friday, December 9, 2011

Section 108. Amendment and alteration of certificates. – No erasure, alteration, or amendment shall be made upon the registration book after the entry of a certificate of title or of a memorandum thereon and the attestation of the same by the Register of Deeds, except by order of the proper Court of First Instance. A registered owner or other person having interest in the registered property, or, in proper cases, the Register of Deeds with the approval of the Commissioner of Land Registration, may apply by petition to the court upon the ground that the registered interest of any description, whether vested, contingent, expectant or inchoate appearing on the certificate, have terminated and ceased; or that new interest not appearing upon the certificate have arisen or been created; or that an omission or an error was made in entering a certificate or any memorandum thereon, or on any duplicate certificate: or that the same or any person in the certificate has been changed or that the registered owner has married, or, if registered as married, that the marriage has been terminated and no right or interest of heirs or creditors will thereby be affected; or that a corporation which owned registered land and has been dissolved has not yet convened the same within three years after its dissolution; or upon any other reasonable ground; and the court may hear and determine the petition after notice to all parties in interest, and may order the entry or cancellation of a new certificate, the entry or cancellation of a memorandum upon a certificate, or grant any other relief upon such terms and conditions, requiring security and bond if necessary, as it may consider proper;Provided, however, That this section shall not be construed to give the court authority to reopen the judgment or decree of registration, and that nothing shall be done or ordered by the court which shall impair the title or other interest of a purchaser holding a certificate for value and in good faith, or his heirs and assigns without his or their written consent. Where the owner’s duplicate certificate is not presented, a similar petition may be filed as provided in the preceding section.

All petitions or motions filed under this section as well as any other provision of this decree after original registration shall be filed and entitled in the original case in which the decree of registration was entered.

Based on the provision, the proceeding for the amendment and alteration of a certificate of title under Section 108 of P.D. No. 1529 is applicable in seven instances or situations, namely: (a) when registered interests of any description, whether vested, contingent, expectant, or inchoate, have terminated and ceased; (b) when new interests have arisen or been created which do not appear upon the certificate; (c) when any error, omission or mistake was made in entering a certificate or any memorandum thereon or on any duplicate certificate; (d) when the name of any person on the certificate has been changed; (e) when the registered owner has been married, or, registered as married, the marriage has been terminated and no right or interest of heirs or creditors will thereby be affected; (f) when a corporation, which owned registered land and has been dissolved, has not conveyed the same within three years after its dissolution; and (g) when there is reasonable ground for the amendment or alteration of title.[8]

We agree with both the CA and the RTC that the petitioner was in reality seeking the reconveyance of the property covered by OCT No. 684, not the cancellation of a certificate of title as contemplated by Section 108 of P.D. No. 1529. Thus, his petition did not fall under any of the situations covered by Section 108, and was for that reason rightly dismissed.

Moreover, the filing of the petition would have the effect of reopening the decree of registration, and could thereby impair the rights of innocent purchasers in good faith and for value. To reopen the decree of registration was no longer permissible, considering that the one-year period to do so had long ago lapsed, and the properties covered by OCT No. 684 had already been subdivided into smaller lots whose ownership had passed to third persons. Thusly, the petition tended to violate the proviso in Section 108 of P.D. No. 1529, to wit:

xxx Provided, however, That this section shall not be construed to give the court authority to reopen the judgment or decree of registration, and that nothing shall be done or ordered by the court which shall impair the title or other interest of a purchaser holding a certificate for value in good faith, or his heirs and assigns without his or their written consent. Where the owner’s duplicate certificate is not presented, a similar petition may be filed as provided in the preceding section.

Nor is it subject to dispute that the petition was not a mere continuation of a previous registration proceeding. Shorn of the thin disguise the petitioner gave to it, the petition was exposed as a distinct and independent action to seek the reconveyance of realty and to recover damages. Accordingly, he should perform jurisdictional acts, like paying the correct amount of docket fees for the filing of an initiatory pleading, causing the service of summons on the adverse parties in order to vest personal jurisdiction over them in the trial court, and attaching a certification against forum shopping (as required for all initiatory pleadings). He ought to know that his taking such required acts for granted was immediately fatal to his petition, warranting the granting of the respondents’ motion to dismiss.